The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to law:
In criminal law, mens rea is the mental state of a defendant who is accused of committing a crime. In common law jurisdictions, most crimes require proof both of mens rea and actus reus before the defendant can be found guilty.
In American jurisprudence, an excuse is a defense to criminal charges that is a distinct from an exculpation. Justification and excuse are different defenses in a criminal case. Exculpation is a related concept which reduces or extinguishes a person's culpability, such as their liability to pay compensation to the victim of a tort in the civil law.
Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a government's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the illegal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term "noncompliance" is used differently by different authors. Its most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.
In law, willful ignorance is when a person seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally keeping themselves unaware of facts that would render them liable or implicated. In United States v. Jewell, the court held that proof of willful ignorance satisfied the requirement of knowledge as to criminal possession and importation of drugs.
A duty to rescue is a concept in tort law that arises in a number of cases, describing a circumstance in which a party can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party who could face potential injury or death without being rescued. In common law systems, it is rarely formalized in statutes which would bring the penalty of law down upon those who fail to rescue. This does not necessarily obviate a moral duty to rescue: though law is binding and carries government-authorized sanctions and awarded civil penalties, there are also separate ethical arguments for a duty to rescue even where law does not punish failure to rescue.
In criminal law, a mistake of fact may sometimes mean that, while a person has committed the physical element of an offence, because they were labouring under a mistake of fact, they never formed the mental element. This is unlike a mistake of law, which is not usually a defense; law enforcement may or may not take for granted that individuals know what the law is.
In private international law, the public policy doctrine or ordre public concerns the body of principles that underpin the operation of legal systems in each state. This addresses the social, moral and economic values that tie a society together: values that vary in different cultures and change over time. Law regulates behaviour either to reinforce existing social expectations or to encourage constructive change, and laws are most likely to be effective when they are consistent with the most generally accepted societal norms and reflect the collective morality of the society.
In law, the principle of imputation or attribution underpins the concept that ignorantia juris non excusat—ignorance of the law does not excuse. All laws are published and available for study in all developed states. The said imputation might also be termed "fair notice." The content of the law is imputed to all persons who are within the jurisdiction, no matter how transiently.
Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court reversed the conviction of John L. Cheek, a tax protester, for willful failure to file tax returns and tax evasion. The Court held that an actual good-faith belief that one is not violating the tax law, based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, negates willfulness, even if that belief is irrational or unreasonable. The Court also ruled that an actual belief that the tax law is invalid or unconstitutional is not a good faith belief based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, and is not a defense.
The Clitophon is a 4th-century BC dialogue traditionally ascribed to Plato, though the work's authenticity is debated. It is the shortest dialogue in Plato's traditional corpus. It centers on a discussion between Clitophon and Socrates, with Socrates remaining mostly silent. Most scholarship until recently has been concerned with the authenticity rather than the actual meaning and contents of Clitophon.
R v Jorgensen, [1995] 4 S.C.R. 55 is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on the knowledge requirement for criminal offences. The Court held that the offence of "knowingly" selling obscene materials requires that the accused be aware that the dominant characteristic of the material was the exploitation of sex and that he knew of the specific acts which made material obscene. Where the accused has a suspicion of the dominant characteristics or specific acts of the material but decided not to make any further inquiries then the accused will be deemed to have known of the material's content. This decision confirms much of what was held in the earlier case of R. v. Sansregret.
In criminal law, guilt is the state of being responsible for the commission of an offense. Legal guilt is entirely externally defined by the state, or more generally a "court of law". Being factually guilty of a criminal offense means that one has committed a violation of criminal law or performed all the elements of the offense set out by a criminal statute. The determination that one has committed that violation is made by an external body after the determination of the facts by a finder of fact or "factfinder" and is, therefore, as definitive as the record-keeping of the body. For instance, in the case of a bench trial, a judge acts as both the court of law and the factfinder, whereas in a jury trial, the jury is the trier of fact and the judge acts only as the trier of law.
Minos is purported to be one of the dialogues of Plato. It features Socrates and a companion who together attempt to find a definition of "law".
Ignorance is a state of being uninformed.
Lambert v. California, 355 U.S. 225 (1957), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the defense of ignorance of the law when there is no legal notice. The court held that when one is required to register one's presence, failure to register may be punished only when there is a probability that the accused party had knowledge of the law before committing the crime of failing to register.
In law, knowledge is one of the degrees of mens rea that constitute part of a crime. For example, in English law, the offense of knowingly being a passenger in a vehicle taken without consent (TWOC) requires that the prosecution prove not only that the defendant was a passenger in a vehicle and that it was taken by the driver without consent, but also that the defendant knew that it was taken without consent.
In the North American legal system and in US Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, willful violation or willful non-compliance is a violation of workplace rules and policies that occurs either deliberately or as a result of neglect.
Re Diplock or Chichester Diocesan Fund and Board of Finance Inc v Simpson [1944] AC 341 is an English trusts law and unjust enrichment case, concerning tracing and an action for money had and received.
In the canon law of the Catholic Church, the computation of time, also translated as the reckoning of time, is the manner by which legally-specified periods of time are calculated according to the norm of the canons on the computation of time. The application of laws frequently involves a question of time: generally three months must elapse after their promulgation before they go into effect; some obligations have to be fulfilled within a certain number of days, or weeks, or months. Hence the need of the rules for the computation of time.
